fluff and smile
by Splintered Star
Summary: Time goes fast and time goes slow, around and around and sometimes all wibbly-wobbly. Luxord likes finding the places where it's stranger than usual, and this one has a fascinating little gatekeeper cat too.


(not my characters. was scouring through hard drive and found this from ages ago and realized that it actually worked and didn't need editing. ergo, posting time. also, Cheshire is hard)

It was a twisty sort of world, where doors never opened to the same place twice and gravity was mostly a matter of preference. He thought that Xigbar might find the place interesting, but then again Xigbar might not notice the really fascinating part…

Luxord leaned against a wall painted with the images of a labyrinth and watched a Queen order card soldiers around. It was an intriguing study, though what precisely she ruled was impossible to tell. A tiny little patchwork world, with a painted-on sky and a make believe kingdom.

He liked the card soldiers. He might try making his own sometime. Time was his specialty but his love was probability, and everything was possible even if it wasn't probable. A few tweaks to chance and anything could happen.

"Don't bother," a bright grin said next to him, "It already has." A series of stripes wrapped around a nearby branch, and a pair of eyes popped into existence above the smile. It was all roughly the shape of a cat – though less what a cat looked like and more what a cat was, all smirk and things-known-not.

"You're a strange thing," the cat said, it's 'head' twisting around and re-orienting itself upside down. "I've seen hollow places but never hollow people."

Luxord's smile had the edge of a smirk. "Hollow?" He said instead of asking how – cats' eyes were never fooled. "But I have blood and bones all tucked inside." He turned away from the little make-believe court, because this was more interesting.

The eyes and mouth turned so that they were right side up again. "Blood and bones but hollow still," it purred, "like a bubble or a balloon." A striped-paw shape reached for Luxord's chest and claws poked him through his shirt. "Maybe you'll pop, or maybe you already have."

"Maybe I'll make you pop instead." Luxord reached forward to scratch behind pink and purple ears – but his hand shifted away, or the cat shifted first – his hand was where he put it but the cat wasn't, now a branch away instead of right at hand. There was no intervening movement – but Luxord had felt it, and if he had a heart his smile might have been real. He could ask how or he could play the game, so he said, "Little kitty, can't I pet you?"

Another shift of what is to what could be, and the cat was purring around his feet. "Why can't you?" The head bounced back up to the tree branch – the stripes around his feet faded slowly, like lines of fog wrapped around nothing. "Is it because you don't exist?"

"Or maybe it's because you don't?" He reached again and the cat suffered him to scratch under his chin – through his glove the fur felt soft and thick and much longer than it looked. "Is there anything to you but fluff and smile?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Are we all not fluff and dreams?" The cat flipped away and stood on its front paws, its head twisting around. "The insides and outsides and upsides and downsides of me don't always match." Another half-blink of shifting and the cat was on his shoulders, as light as a ghost or a left-over-shadow. "You're not supposed to be here, hollow man," but the tone hadn't changed, nothing but smug amusement, "or maybe you're the only thing that should be here and the rest of us shouldn't be."

"Should be or shouldn't be," Luxord smiled as the cat jumped off his shoulders, "seem like silly things to wonder about in this place." A place of painted skies and never-ending-parties, caught up in a spin of again the same painted sun and the same shouts of "off with her head!" and a pocket watch that dripped with lies –

The cat's grin grew a little bit wider, curling around its eyes. "Shoulds and coulds and woulds are the only things to wonder, hollow man. No point in wondering about what is or was or will be." Below them, a white rabbit ran by muttering that it was late. Luxord wondered how it could tell. "You should be there so why are you here?"

A strange little gatekeeper cat, this one. "I like it here. Why are you here when you could be there?" Questions to answer questions, twisting the world around them in a maelstrom.

"Where or when or why else would I be?" The cat hung upside down from a branch by its tail. "the shadows are quiet and the light not to bright."

"And no time to detract from your wandering?" Luxord smiled, because *that* was the fascinating thing, the thing no one noticed except for him – time was frozen here, the clocksprings broken and the painted horizon rewound every night. Things happened after each other, but that wasn't time, not really –

Walking in this world made Luxord feel like his veins had slowed, a sort of pleasantly drunk hum in the back of his mind. There was no time here but what outsiders carried in with them, wrapped up in the magic of the keyblade or the purity of a princess' heart.

The outline of the cat shook, the stripes shivering slightly out of time with each other. "Time isn't suited for me and I'm not suited to it. Much too much bother for a cat like me."

Luxord's eyes narrowed and his power tweaked – for half a breath, the cat's fur was frosted and its bright eyes dulled by cataracts, his cheeks thinned out and its whiskers drooping under the force of time. For just a moment Luxord was able to make the what if into the is – and then it snapped back and Luxord said, "No, it doesn't suit you at all."

Bright eyes narrowed at him, and the mocking smirk dropped away for a moment. Reality shifted and the cat was on his head, staring down at him with eyes and a smile that oriented themselves to his. "I think you should leave now."

Black rushed up around his eyes and then he was on a mushroom, being poked in the leg by a caterpillar. Luxord patted it on the head, and smiled at the world in general.

He rather liked this world, really.


End file.
